To Not Be Here
How I want to wet myself in that languid black well
Where Oppen and Gadamer and the Beats and Roethke
Shook off so easily the eeriness of life.
They had some sort of shelf just hidden from the TV
Or the violent street, there was time then
For poetry, for a person to get lost in an autumn
And never be found again.
Today, there is no time for words,
The flash of good video is too much, they’ve made it
Really good, you know, the pull of a solid show
Is inescapable, and it’s so much more real than this white noise.
Who am I to long for sixty years ago, or for some imagined romance
With a man I kissed one night, in the kitchen where he kisses his
Wife, where the feast of bodies lives on in a big idea that only
Cracks slightly, so much slighter than than a life convinced by longing.
-Nina Alvarez
Poem of the Month 